Monday, April 17, 2006

The elimination of all disease.

From the work done by teams from Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Al-Mustansiriya (of Baghdad) Universities comes the latest estimates on Iraqi deaths since the US led invasion of that country in March 2003. Fortunately, despite what General Tommy Franks stated at the start of the liberation of Iraq, i.e., "We don't count bodies," someone does. And the latest count, as published in Britain's Lancet Medical Journal, is pretty damn grim. It puts estimates of deaths as high as 250,000.

It could be argued that after more than three years and at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, Bush's goal of bringing freedom to Iraqis has thus far succeeded in truly liberating only 1/4 of a million Iraqis. Those would be the "fortunate" dead ones who no longer have to confront the daily degradations and miseries heaped upon the unfortunate survivors of Bush's liberation.

But if one studies this chart, it becomes apparent Bush may be stumbling upon a serendipitous result of major proportions. One which may be of extreme interest to the National Institute of Health. If one compares the pre-war/post-war charts, it immediately becomes evident we may be on to something of ery great significance indeed.

Pre-war deaths by heart attack, stroke, other chronic diseases such as diabetes, deaths of the elderly such as dimentia and failing health (formerly considered "natural causes") and infant and neonatal deaths are all down sharply since the US war began, i.e., we may be on the verge of eliminating most diseases in Iraq responsible for premature and natural caused deaths!

Of course, these are just very preliminary findings. An extension of the study certainly seems warranted, but it just could be we may have the ability to reduce, totally, unwanted deaths as the result of health problems among the populace. And the answer could lie in one modest process: all the US simply need all is nuke the whole fuckin' country! How easy is that? Not only would Iraq become the most liberated nation in history, but with no more deaths from disease, they'd be the healthiest on earth as well. What a historical testament that would be to Bush, his psychotic co-conspirators and their talibangelistic supporters!

Nina: Yeh, I agree. You know, that's some pretty sick sh*t all right, but I've "grown" the past 5 years in ways I never thought imagineable.

So, "Why can't we have similar aspirations?" I think we may. I think it's called Armageddon.

Of course, we really must use caution here, crediting Bush with "curing" Iraq. Such acclaim for our president could result in him being brought before an international criminal tribunal for "practicing medicine without a license" and we wouldn't want that.

The Kurt Vonnegut I'm now reading has a great observation he made on the 50th anniversary of the A-Bombing of Hiroshima: "I know a single word that proves our own government is capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid and racist, yahooistic murders of unarmed men, women and children, murders wholly devoid of military common sense. That word is NAGASAKI."

This from a man who was a WWII POW & witnessed the bombing of Dresden. Interesting times we're reliving. D.K.

THE BEGINNING IS NEAR

HUH?

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

"Keep in mind that this planet is no model for rational thought, and that what passes for sanity here is sending chills down the spine of the remainder of the universe." E.T. 101

"An Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful." ~ David Korten